Tired of dropping $10 on a cheeseburger for no good reason? Or $4 on a White Monster or that fancy coffee?
The W8 (Wonder 8) Calculator assumes the user input represents a habitual, unnecessary spending behavior. It calculates the true cost of this habit by multiplying the entered amount by a frequency: daily, every other day, weekly, monthly, or annually. Then, it projects how much that money could have grown if invested instead. W8 bases its projections on the historical performance of the S&P 500, which returned an average of 10.985% annually over the 30 years leading up to December 2024—or 8.262% annually after inflation. These calculations assume dividends are automatically reinvested. All investment projections in W8 use compound interest at an annual rate of 8.262%, providing a realistic, inflation-adjusted estimate of opportunity cost.
The W8 Calculator is a proud open-source and free project. The full source code can be inspected, modified, and forked via the app’s public GitHub repository .
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Mackenzie Criswell
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